After eating lunch, prior to the playoffs in the afternoon, the three parish teams are in the Marriott Marquis’ atrium, waiting for the release of the playoff seeds. With, of course, Thomas relaying the status of the parish’s three teams to the parish radio.

  “There are only ten teams who finished the prelims with an eight-and-two record or better, and so we won’t play until round twenty-three since the winners’ bracket doesn’t play in round twenty-two” Flo tells VA players when the playoff seeding is announced, while starting the playoffs with the 4 card.

  “This means we’ll watch Hathaway’s first playoff game!” Reese tells Olivia. “Lacassine is eliminated, since we finished four and six”

  I guess, I can breathe for an hour, Olivia then starts looking for ways to gift Ned an electronic copy of Friday Night Lights.

  They then go to the same conference room VA played Moscow #263 A in earlier today, because the Hornets play in there.

  “This is round twenty-one, the first playoff round of the 2041 NAQT High School National Championship Tournament. This winner’s bracket game pits the thirteen card against the fifty-two card. From Michigan, we have Detroit Catholic Central A, from Louisiana, we have Hathaway” Imélie starts the game.

  Imélie? I never imagined her working a playoff game at the HSNCT pitting a Louisiana team! Flo gets flashbacks of her very own HSNCT run as a player. I thought NAQT wouldn’t make staffers work games with at least one team from the staffer’s home state! She worked tournaments in the New Orleans area, but she was never made to work VA games.

  After the game ends in a Hornets’ loss, Flo gets Olivia to meet with Imélie since the latter isn’t assigned to work a game in round 22. And possibly no further game.

  “This is Imélie. One of the earliest VA quiz bowl legends” Flo makes that introduction.

  “I’m Olivia. As a first-timer at the HSNCT, I felt crushed by the pressure, how did you deal with it when you first played here?”

  “Honestly, Jennings didn’t expect nearly as much from quiz bowl back then than it does today. Even I didn’t expect much myself, but I was still a relatively established intellectual quantity in town back then. Despite being in the shadows of Gen, Krista and Marcia. As a senior, because I burst onto the national quiz bowl stage, people in town expected me to be all three put together, but ultimately I became a better version of Marcia”

  “Marcia? What kind of quiz bowler was she?”

  “She was a mathlete as well, like me, and as is often the case with mathletes playing quiz bowl, was better at math and science, but could still somewhat play outside of that”

  Damn: it seems like, even us at VA tended to look at mathletics as a source of quiz bowl talent! And yet Flo told me about how Imélie was the kind of genius I would only meet a handful of in person in my lifetime... It makes me wonder how good she really was as a mathlete or as a quiz bowler... Olivia muses as she gets to Hathaway’s second game, against Stuyvesant.

  It’s then that she finally locates a PDF file of that book about the Permian Panthers to send to Ned, through his social media:

  Olivia: Here, a gift for you: a digital copy of Friday Night Lights

  Ned: Good luck into the playoffs *kisses*

  After Hathaway wins its second playoff game, the time and place for VA’s first playoff game arrives. Which takes place at Hilton’s room 203, across the street from the Marriott Marquis. With only a handful of spectators, namely guests from the Hilton, in attendance in the conference room, the game is about to begin.

  Which, given that VA is a much higher seed than their opponents, makes them the favorites to win the game. And handily. However, because Hathaway lost its third playoff game, the Hornets finish tied for 49th place.

  At this point, the HSNCT Companion App informs VA that their game is scheduled for the Marquis Ballroom, and hence the biggest one. The game begins and the two most rabid quiz bowl fanbases in the country face off long before the scenario they both dream of would actually happen.

  “This is round twenty-four, the fourth playoff round of the 2041 NAQT High School National Championship Tournament. This winner’s bracket game pits the four card against the thirteen card. From Louisiana, we have Venomous Agendas, from Michigan, we have Detroit Catholic Central A”

  With NAQT’s livestream being centered on that room, they are getting filmed. And, obviously, even though it’s not full, there’s still more spectators in there than Olivia ever played to at State. I never played a quiz bowl game to this many people before. How would playing to a crowd that big differ in quiz bowl vs as a cheerleader, she ruminates as she shakes in her seat.

  However, Olivia doesn’t shake it off as fast as she wanted, but the first tossup she feels sufficiently able to answer still comes in the first few ones:

  “The titular character of this novel is sent to a red room shortly before leaving her childhood home”

  This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

  It’s then that she’s pushed to buzz in. Before even Joaquin or DCC’s lit player. Who seems to mostly match the DCC player in her nightmare.

  I hope this doesn’t turn into Moscow #263 A all over again, where her neg cost us the game... Cindy starts sweating as Olivia buzzes in.

  “Jane Eyre!” Olivia shouts.

  “Fifteen. For ten points each...”

  As much as VA might have wanted to hold on to the lead Olivia just brought them, they must fight tooth and nail to keep it. And this keeps the viewers, be it in Jefferson Davis Parish or the greater Detroit area, which jointly account for the vast majority of the audience watching NAQT’s livestream, on the edge of their seats.

  For years now, the VAs acquired a reputation for getting into more last-tossup showdowns than any other quiz bowling powerhouse. They’re about to play their fourth one in this year’s HSNCT alone. Especially when they lost the lead in tossup #23, they have one last tossup to get the lead back.

  The first three times we went through this, the team in the lead held on to it. But maybe, just this one, we might be able to take the lead! Olivia muses as the final tossup starts.

  “Tossup number twenty-four: This city’s southeast is home to the Incan archaeological site of Pachacamac”

  Trailing by 20 points, VA knows that they must score the tossup to win. Yet, Pachacamac isn’t nearly as well-known as Machu Picchu or even Cuzco, so both DCC and VA abstain from buzzing in for the time being.

  “A medical condition whereby captors show sympathy for their hostages was first discovered in this city”

  At this point, Jim and DCC’s special topics player are locked into a buzzer race, and everyone else on both sides pray their side wins. And, subsequently, answer the tossup correctly.

  By a split-second, Jim ends up winning the buzzer race.

  “Lima!” Jim exclaims.

  “Fifteen. For ten points each, answer these questions about Rossini’s operas. In this opera, Count Almaviva succeeds in getting Rosina by bribing a notary”

  To this bonus part, every VA player draws a blank, and their blood pressure goes up as the clock ticks in on them. As the five seconds elapse, they are treated to a new bonus part:

  “The Barber of Seville. This opera is a satire of the influence print media can have on people’s lives”

  Damn it! Why would someone satirize print media back then? It was a dangerous thing to do, even if you didn’t have any political aims, Olivia gets puzzled by the bonus part, freezing her in place for the whole five seconds, even as her blood pressure is about to peak. At the end of these 5 seconds:

  “The Gazette. A scene in this opera has its titular character shoot an apple off someone’s head”

  Joaquin buzzes in. “William Tell!”

  “Ten for the bonus, and that’s the game. Score?”

  “DCC three hundred forty-five, VA three hundred fifty!”

  “Venomous! Agendas!” the Hathaway and Lacassine players all chant in unison upon hearing the game’s result. And causing the blood pressures to decrease all over the room.

  And yet, the VAs’ next game, played against Hunter A, would prove a clearer win than against DCC. Which leads them to their round 26 game. As Flo reviews the bracket in the HSNCT Companion App:

  “All right, we win this game, we’re going directly to the Super Seven bracket, and we keep playing after dinner. In all cases, however, we’ll finish at least eighth” Flo points out as they go to the Imperial Ballroom B to play that Round 26 game.

  “But we didn’t come all this way just to finish eighth!” Cindy shouts.

  “Of course not!” the other three players shout in unison. “We’re in win-now mode!”

  While the Imperial Ballroom B isn’t as large as the Marquis, Olivia looks at the opposing players and she realizes that, like her, their current opponents also have a cheerleader playing. Who also looks very much like the one in her nightmare two nights ago. So she then braces herself for a clash of the quiz bowl titans.

  “This is round twenty-six, the sixth playoff round of the 2041 NAQT High School National Championship Tournament. This winner’s bracket game pits the one card against the four card. From Virginia, we have Thomas Jefferson Science and Tech A, from Louisiana, we have Venomous Agendas A”

  Damn it! Has this nightmare come true, and their only girl on hand does cheer, too? Olivia looks at the Colonials’ cheerleader, a Chinese girl not unlike Cindy, but wearing a navy blue and red cheer uniform as opposed to Olivia’s purple-and-green one. Or Cindy’s run-of-the-mill T-shirt-and-jeans. A few moments later:

  “Tossup three: This chemical law arises as a solution to the BGK equation in plasmas” the moderator disgorges the first clue.

  Neither VA nor TJHSST could buzz in on the first clue. But the Colonials have a clear advantage in science over VA, which they drive home in the second clue:

  “On an absorbance vs concentration chart, this chemical law’s linearity breaks down at high concentrations of solute”

  “Beer-Lambert law!” the Colonials’ quiz bowl-playing cheerleader exclaims.

  “Fifteen. For ten points each…”

  Shoot! Our opponents’ cheerleader put them in the lead! Olivia starts to ruminate on this tossup, which is the first either cheerleader got right in this game.

  But as the game goes on, it seems like VA holds an advantage in arts and literature, which both Joaquin and Olivia capitalize on. Yet, with one tossup to go in regulation time, both teams are tied.

  And, of course, both cheerleaders go into the final tossup with one power and one tossup apiece. When the moderator starts reading the final regulation tossup:

  “Tossup twenty-four: As an insurgency, this regime’s allies included US-backed KPNLF and FUNCINPEC”

  Everyone in the room is seemingly clueless about what the KPNLF and FUNCINPEC even are. Then again, one is talking about the first clue in a question deep into the HSNCT.

  “This regime’s final members surrendered nineteen years after its overthrow”

  Here both cheerleaders are absorbing every word of the second clue, running their brains at full speed in an attempt to beat the other to the tossup. However, everyone knows they can single-handedly lose their team the game if they neg, so they must be absolutely certain of their answer before buzzing in.

  Olivia’s hands start sweating. I can’t let the Colonials’ cheerleader cost us the game! I must buzz in before she does!

  Tensions skyrocket in the room as Olivia finally breaks the stalemate, as she slams the buzzer a split-second before the Colonials’ cheerleader does:

  “Khmer Rouge!” Olivia shouts.

  “Fifteen”

  “We skip the entire bonus” Cindy declares to the moderator.

  “And that’s the game” The moderator turns to the scorekeeper. “Score?”

  “Thomas Jefferson three hundred twenty-five, VA three hundred forty” the scorekeeper answers.

  “Thomas Jefferson drops down to the elimination bracket, VA advances to the Super Seven bracket!”

  Are we talking about the same girl who, in a nightmare, made me feel like I had to be the smartest cheerleader in the world to even pull as much weight as I did here, on a team guaranteed to finish in the top-7 at the HSNCT? A stream of thoughts crosses Olivia’s mind after winning the buzzer race. But perhaps I imagined someone who’s “smartest-cheerleader-in-the-world” material to be a better player than I, albeit playing on a far worse team.